This blog is about architecture, urbanism, neighborhoods, historic preservation and other elements of the physical environment(s) of Central New York, including Syracuse and its many surrounding towns, villages, farms and natural features.

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

CNY Public Art: The Hiker by Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson at Syracuse's Billings Park by Samuel D. GruberAmong its many public monuments and art, Syracuse boasts a substantial collection of art by women sculptors. These include the Hamilton White Memorial at Fayette Park and the Kirkpatrick Monument (LeMoyne Fountain) by Gail Sherman Corbett, the Elemental Man by Malvina Hoffman and the bronze Saltine Warrior statue by Luise Kaish at Syracuse University, and the high relief sculpture of the Jerry Rescue Monument at Clinton Square by Sharon BuMann. There is also an abstract work by Penny Kaplan outside the Everson Museum, and women ceramicists have created murals in the Westcott area.Perhaps the most famous work by a woman sculptor in Syracuse,The Hiker, located at the south side of Billings Park, goes little mentioned. I venture that today most people who even know the name of the sculptor are not even aware that T. A. Kitson, was a woman. Yet Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson (1871-1932), was a leading artist of her time, and possibly the foremost American woman sculptor of her generation. She made many public monuments throughout the country and at least fifty casts of The Hiker, her best known work, are installed as memorials across the country.

In 1895, Ruggles Kitson was the first woman to be admitted to the National Sculpture Society.
In 1888, at age 17, she won honorable mention at the Salon des Artistes Francais
(the youngest woman ever to receive the honor). She was celebrated when
she returned to the United States and as a (minor) celebrity asked to
comment on everything from art to fashions. When the Kitsons separated in 1909 (her husband had been her teacher and partner), Alice moved to Farmington, where she maintained a studio until her 1932 death in Boston, Massachusetts.

The Syracuse Hiker at the south end of Syracuse's Billings Park in front of the former Central High School. It represents a Spanish American War
soldier and commemorates those who died in that war, the Philippine-American War and the Boxer Rebellion. The statue reminds us of time, much like today, when American forces seemed to be engaged in an unending series of conflicts far from home. Though these were the first wars of American empire, The Hiker represents free-spirited and even carefree individualism rather than the increasingly professionalized militarism of the era. A handsome young soldier - ready for a jungle trek - steps confidently forward. Ruggles Kitson was appreciated as a woman sculptor who could make manly men.

The first version was installed at the university of Minnesota in 1906. The bronze cast in Syracuse was dedicated on Memorial Day, 1924. In stanllatuion postdates the inauguration at the north end of the park of a stone monument dedicated July 15, 1920, known as the Rock of the Marne
Monument, engraved with names of some of the local dead of World War
I, atop of which stands the figure of an infantryman by sculptor Ronald
Hinden Perry. .

The Syracuse Hiker was one of the first placements of the iconic statue, which proliferated around the country after 1921 when the Gorham Manufacturing Company, located in Providence,
Rhode Island, bought the rights to the statue, and over the next 44
years cast at least 50 Hiker statues.The earliest installations of The Hiker were mostly in the northeastern United
States, often complementing Civil War Memorials. Post-World War II statues were installed mostly in the South and
West.
The Syracuse statue was recently restored and cleaned. Interestingly, because of the wide distribution of the statues, they have been used to study air pollution over the last century since their original state is known, and in case so is the date of their installation. Thus conservators and meteorologists can compare deterioration and analysis the effect of acid rain and other pollutants in specific places and over measurable time.

Billings Park is a small open space at South Salina, South Warren and East Adams Streets; about a third of acre in size. It was once a more prominent space in the city, when central High School was open and when the downtown was more knit to the south of the city along South Salina Street. Today,
there is little residential use of the area and there are more parking
lots and garages than active commercials centers. The
space was formerly Warren Park, named like Warren Street in honor of
American Revolutionary War General Joseph Warren. Roger Billings had his
carriage factory on the north side of Adams Street across from the park from 1841 to 1859;(where
the recently
constructed bus terminal is now) and he helped improve the park with
help from fellow citizens Richard W. Jones, George Ostrander and George
Herman. The provided new landscaping, walkways and a central fountain,
and the park was dedicated by Mayor William Stewart, August 24, 1867. For more on Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson see:

Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein,
1990. American
Women Sculptors: A History of Women Working in Three Dimensions
(Boston: G.K. Hall & Co, 1990), pp 102-105.

About Me

Samuel D. GruberI am a cultural heritage consultant involved in a wide variety of
documentation, research, preservation, planning, publication, exhibition
and education projects in America and abroad.
I was trained as a medievalist, architectural historian and
archaeologist, but for 25 years my special expertise has developed in
Jewish art, architecture and historic sites. My various blogs about Jewish Art and Monuments, Central New York and Public Art and Memory allow me to
clear my email and my desk, and to report on some of my travels, by
passing on to a broader public just some of the interesting and
compelling information from projects I am working on, or am following.
Feel free to contact me for more information on any of the topics
posted, or if you have a project of your own you would like to discuss.

My Upcoming CNY Talks and Tours

Wednesday, Feb 5, 2014 1:00 pm (check for details) Syracuse Stage 820 E. Genesee Street Syracuse, NY 13210 Divided Loyalties: Jews and the Civil War In conjunction with performances of the play The Whipping Man by Matthew Lopez I will discuss the involvement of Jews in the Civil War - on the North and south, and something about the often ambivalent Jewish attitude toward American slavery at the time.

Sunday, Feb 16, 2014 11:30 am Congregation Beth Sholom-Chevra Shas Great Synagogues of the World Jews are the “People of Book”, but surprisingly to many, they are also “People of the Building.” Given the opportunity, Jews have built beautiful synagogues for their communities for hundreds of years. Inspired by the detailed architectural accounts in the Bible, and also by their contemporary surroundings, Jews in many places have fulfilled the concept of Hiddur Mitzvah (glorify the commandment) through architecture and architectural decoration. Great synagogues have been built in Europe of since Middle Ages, but especially since the lavish inauguration of the Portuguese synagogue in Amsterdam in the late 17th century the stream of impressive Jewish buildings has continued with little interruption on every inhabited continent throughout the world. This lecture illustrates this architectural and artistic heritage with historic and contemporary images, and traces its survival in the 21st century with special emphasis on lesser known “great synagogues,” on recently restored buildings, and on some of the newest synagogues built.